The Underscore Archives

On 31/10/2007, Neil Weston <neil_mw at hotmail.com> wrote:
> With all the discussions of good working environments / salary at the Watershed, I've been
> interested from a slightly different perspective.  It's really nice (and rather rare) to hear people
> saying how much they enjoy their job / environment.  As a line manager (as well as techie), I
> feel that staff morale is vitally important to productivity and keeping employees employed, and
> any ideas that can be begged, borrowed or stolen would be great!
>
> What elements of the job / environment at the Watershed (and any other employers) were so
> enjoyable?  Obviously I'm interested in ideas that can be integrated into my working
> environment rather than "Joe Bloggs was a good manager", however any ideas / information
> would be useful.

We have unofficial flexible working. It's not flexitime, but  as long
as we're in the office between the hours of 10 and 4 *and* do our
contracted hours (35/week), the mgmnt are cool.

We don't *do* overtime - my boss especially is of the opinion that
there's little point working on past 6pm because productivity drops
off anyway.

Oh, and I've worked at home two days this week because my wife's been
unwell and my daughter needed looking after.

It's a flexible, family-friendly place to work.

We could do with an office more like Joel "on software" Spolsky's, though:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html

Tim